Honda Civic brakes

Part three: project Honda gets discs and pads, front and rear.

Replacing vehicle brakes is a pretty tedious sort of job, but one which many garages and main dealers charge handsomely for. On newish cars it’s often not too bad as the bolts aren’t rusty or rounded-off – but when a car like our Civic has seen 12 or 13 British winters they can often be pretty horrible.

Not just that, but these Honda Civics have ‘wind-back’ rear calipers. That means the caliper piston won’t just push back with gas pliers or a big ugly screwdriver – you need the special tool to wind them back in clockwise on the internal thread. This is because the handbrake operates on the calipers, replacing the even-nastier handbrake shoes used on cars such as BMWS.

Civic calipers are known for seizing and the handbrake mechanism becoming inoperative, so would ours need one or both rear calipers replacing?

Getting started

Nothing ventured, nothing gained, so we ordered a full kit of bits from our sponsors, GSF. We took a risk on the rear calipers and just ordered four discs and two sets of pads. The discs are the usual GSF Drivetec items and very good they are too – we’ve used these on at least ten project cars and never had a single issue so they must be good.

With these came two sets of Bendix brake pads – Bendix are a very old and well-respected brake manufacturer so we were glad to get these. The pads come with new 13mm caliper retaining bolts, already thread-locked, and it’s a good idea to use these upon reassembly.

I also used some of my tube of Mintex Ceratec brake lube. This is now the standard replacement for copper grease; you can still use copper grease, of course, but Ceratec is special stuff that’s able to withstand massive heat – and it just looks neater.